


This is home

by tansie



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Anxiety, Jealousy, M/M, Matt is everyone's insightful friend, Minyards making progress?, POV Kevin, but everyone needs therapy really, espcially Kevin, maaybe?, neil and andrew fighting :'(, problem drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29116587
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tansie/pseuds/tansie
Summary: Kevin mixes up his feelings about Andrew and Neil with his feelings about exy, can't seem to communicate, and is generally a mess. Everyone is just trying to figure out what makes them feel at home.
Relationships: Kevin Day/Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 14
Kudos: 84
Collections: AFTG Mixtape Exchange 2021





	This is home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nanatsuyu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nanatsuyu/gifts).



> This is a gift fic for nanatsuyu, part of the aftg mixtape fic exchange and inspired by the song 'This is home' by Cavetown! :) Hope you enjoy!
> 
> ~~~
> 
> PS. This happens the year immediately after canon, but Dan, Renee and Allison have left because I misremembered when they graduated 😅.

Kevin never has understood Neil’s half-smoking of cigarettes, the way he lights them, shields them from the wind in his cupped hands, blows on the tip to keep them alight and never takes a drag—and he doesn’t understand it now. Just another thing to be filed away in the list of unimportant things Kevin doesn’t understand about Neil. He thinks he gets Neil better than he gets anyone else on the team, but even so that list is long and getting longer. He doesn’t understand how Neil’s uncontrolled temper makes him brave. He doesn’t understand how Neil can make perfect calls in the middle of a game without being able to articulate why, as if acting on instinct. He doesn’t understand Neil’s strange closeness with Andrew, or the distance that seems to have grown between Kevin and the other two in these last months. But Kevin tells himself he doesn’t need to understand any of these things—just as long as they don’t harm their game.

So Kevin doesn’t know what to say this evening when Neil asks:

“Have you heard from Andrew?”

Kevin had turned up at the dorm to pick Neil up for their nightly practice only to find his room empty. Kevin had wondered if this was an oversight or was supposed to communicate something, but if the latter then it was something he found hard to interpret—how could Neil have forgotten their practice? On the roof, Neil is sitting in the dusk with his legs dangling over the edge, as Kevin had seen Andrew do so many times before. The night air’s cleanness is cut with tobacco smoke. Kevin leaves half a beat before replying,

“No. Why would I have?” He isn’t—he definitely isn’t—interested in the answer so he continues, “It’s time for practice.” Neil doesn’t say anything for a long second, and Kevin curses himself for not being better at this stuff—people—communication. Stuff like that doesn’t matter—it shouldn’t ever affect the game, it doesn’t ever affect the game—until it does, and then he’s at sea.

“He hasn’t texted me. So I thought he might have texted you.” Neil’s voice is halting and starting how it rarely is these days. Kevin can think of nothing to say to this, so he says nothing. He had assumed that Neil and Andrew would be in constant contact, even with Andrew and Aaron off in Oakland for their trip. But as important as Andrew is to their practices and to the team, as important as he’s been in keeping Kevin and Neil safe this last year, he’s no use to them from a distance, so it hadn’t occurred to Kevin to check in with him. After another pause,

“We should get to the court,” Kevin states flatly. He’s not the person Neil should be having—trying to have—this conversation with. And Neil shouldn’t be spending his time with his mind on Andrew when it could be on the team, on the game, Kevin thinks with a burst of irritation. They’ve been designing a schedule of drills and practices for the freshmen who’ll be arriving in two weeks, and they each have such a long way to go themselves. There’s no time for this, this irrelevant stuff—there’s never enough time. He sees a muscle tighten in Neil’s jaw. Then—

“Right,” a sharp nod. “You’re right,” and it’s as if Neil is responding to Kevin’s unspoken thought. Neil crushes his spent cigarette butt under his shoe and the two of them turn down the stairs and away from the roof. They’re silent on drive to the Foxhole Court.

* * *

A couple days go by without further mention of Andrew. Things seem pretty normal—although perhaps Neil practises with even more than his usual level of intensity in their evening sessions. It’s not usual for Kevin to get tired out first—he’s been pushing himself this hard for years, compared to just a year for Neil at this intensity, and his stamina is like no-one else’s among the Foxes. So when, even as his own muscles are aching and his mind is turning towards the showers, he notices that Neil isn’t slowing at all, Kevin is irritated at himself. Why the hell is he tiring more easily than Neil tonight? They push themselves for another fifteen minutes, repeating and repeating a precision drill they want to perfect before they teach it to their teammates. Kevin is half-lost in the meditative pain of pushing his body, the quiet joy at seeing his accuracy slowly improve. But then Neil misses an easy catch, fails to hide the way his hand seizes up, almost drops his racket, and Kevin realises how exhausted he must be.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Kevin snaps without thinking, “I can’t have you injuring yourself right before the new season starts just because push yourself too hard in practice.”

“I’m f –” Neil starts and stops himself, “I’m just tired.”

“Adults know how to pace themselves and when to stop,” Kevin barks back. “You should know this, Neil.”

“You could go on—why should I be able be able to do less than you?”

“What the hell has that got to do with anything? Don’t make your jealousy a problem for the team.” The moment he’s said it it sounds wrong, though. He’s so often felt Neil’s razor-focus fixed on him, been aware of Neil’s simmering jealousy over his opportunities to play when he was younger, the training he’d had that Neil had missed out on. But that sense had receded after Neil had spent time with the Ravens over Christmas break—the realities of life in the Nest undermining Neil’s ability to hold it up as a desirable missed opportunity. And really, this doesn’t feel quite like that earlier jealousy. After a moment Kevin adds lamely, “Pay attention to your own fucking body.”

The two of them glare at each other for half a second before Neil turns on his heel and heads towards the locker rooms, leaving Kevin to pick up the scattered balls and pack away the cones alone.

By the time Kevin reaches the locker rooms Neil is already washed and dressed, and he leaves while Kevin is showering off. Kevin comes out to find him leaning against the car, expression tight and unreadable, hair already nearly dry in the balmy South Carolina night. The two don’t exchange another word until they’re halfway back to Fox Tower when, without taking his eyes off the road, Neil says,

“I don’t know why it isn’t working.” Kevin is silent for a moment, trying to work out what they’re talking about.

“What?”

“It always worked before. Practising, getting tired out. It always,” Neil gestures, doesn’t finish the sentence. Kevin frowns.

“Just stop when you reach your limit. You won’t get anywhere by pushing yourself until you injure something.”

“I’m not talking about practice.” Neil snaps back.

“Well you should be. The rest of the team will be back in a couple days, the new recruits a week after that. Why aren’t you concentrating on what we need to do for the new season?”

“That’s what I’m trying to say!” Kevin can feel the frustration in Neil’s voice, sparking off his own impatience. “Exy, or just fucking exercise, I’ve always been able to drown out anything else I was thinking about, anything else I was worried about. And now I should be focused on our practices, preparing for the new season, and instead I can’t stop thinking about—” He halts, but Kevin doesn’t let the silence stretch out long.

“About what?” He makes a wild guess. “The Moriyamas? That’s just another reason we’ve got to concentrate on our game, on winning out this season—on making Court. You’re the one who made this deal, we just all need to keep committed to following through.”

“I know that.” Both their voices are raised more than necessary to cut over the noise of the car. “Of course I fucking know that. I’m not stressing about the Moriyamas, I’m stressing about Andrew.”

“What?” Kevin feels himself gritting his teeth, a stubborn unwillingness to turn his thoughts or feelings towards what Neil is trying to say. “He’ll be fine. Him and Aaron aren’t going to kill each other, however badly this trip is going.” Neil is silent again until finally Kevin’s resolve breaks. “Look, if you want to talk about your damn relationship problems, talk to Dobson.” The engine noise seems to bloom suddenly loud in the enclosed space. “I don’t know why you’d try and talk to me about that shit.”

* * *

There had been a point when Kevin had imagined being exactly the person Neil might come to to talk to about that kind of shit. Or maybe more accurately, there’d been a point when he’d assumed that what he and Neil shared would subsume anything as trivial as romance, relationship dramas. Not that he’d ever have put it into words like that, as bluntly as that. It had just seemed obvious. What was more important in their lives than exy? Who else among the Foxes really got that, except Kevin and Neil? And as a result, who could get them better than they got each other?

But that wasn’t how things turned out. In the end it seems like Kevin was the only one who really had the focus and strength of purpose to keep his mind and body turned towards what mattered after all. Just like always.

By the time the rest of their old team arrives back a couple of days later, Kevin has pushed his irritation with Neil back down to somewhere he’s not quite aware of it. They alternate practising and paperwork, spending time in Wymack’s office working with the coach to sketch out individualised training plans for each of the new recruits. Kevin watches the videos of their future teammates’ past games again and again, trying to map out their weaknesses, bad habits, the things he’s going to need to fix—or at least compensate for—to give them all the shot they need this season. Him and Neil barely talk, or at least only talk shop, but that isn’t too much of a change from normal. If Wymack notices an unusual frostiness between the two of them, he doesn’t comment. Kevin sees no evidence of whether Neil has heard from Andrew, and he ignores the question so completely that after a day he’s half-forgotten that that was where their argument had started.

Matt and Nicky arrive back on the Saturday, a day before Andrew and Aaron are due back from their trip. Without the girls, and with the remaining team arriving back in dribs and drabs, it feels like a subdued homecoming. Kevin is surprised at the quiet pleasure he feels in seeing Matt again, someone else who shows at least some commitment to the game. It quickly dissipates when Matt agrees to Nicky’s pronouncement that it’s been far too long a day of travelling to go to the court now, and that they should spend the evening watching a movie. Kevin says he’d rather watch an old Breckenridge game he’d taped, preparing for their first match in a month’s time. He half expects Neil to come with him, but Neil doesn’t seem to notice Kevin’s implied invitation.

Sunday morning he goes down to breakfast with Matt—Neil is out for a run, and Nicky still asleep. Wymack and a couple of the other coaches had persuaded the school authorities to let a handful of athletes stay on campus over the summer break to have access to better training facilities than they each would at home. Kevin had been enjoying the nearly-deserted athletes’ dining hall, the quiet hallways of Fox Tower. It had had a studious air, as if everyone there was on the same page as him—dedicating their time and energies to their sport, whatever that was. Now the dining hall is starting to fill up again with other early-returning students, and he already misses the peace.

It isn’t until they’ve almost finished eating that Matt leans across the table as if wanting to show that their conversation is about to get more private and says,

“So, what’s going on with you and Neil?”

Kevin blinks. “What do you mean, what’s going on?”

Matt raises an eyebrow. “At the end of last semester you guys were like inseparable exy buddies”—Kevin scowls at that phrase—“and now you seem like you’re barely talking! And Neil’s in a weird mood, even for him. What happened?”

“Nothing happened.” Matt waits patiently. “Nothing important happened. Some bullshit thing is going on with Neil and Andrew and Neil can’t keep his damn mind on practice, that’s all. It’s like he’s not taking his responsibility as captain seriously at all.”

“Something’s up with Neil and Andrew?” Matt’s voice immediately shifts to a worried tone. “Seriously? I wouldn’t have seen that coming—they seemed so solid in their own fucked-up way and they were fine a couple weeks ago.” Kevin shrugs and doesn’t add anything. “What exactly did Neil say was going on?”

“I don’t know,” Kevin glances at his phone, “something about Andrew not returning his texts. I told him to take his little dramas elsewhere and keep his head in the game. We need a captain who’s actually focused on what’s important, not spending all his time worrying about his boyfriend.”

“Dude, seriously? I know you’re one of them, but—” Matt shakes his head, “you’re not a psychopath or completely socially clueless. You could have talked to him about it, whatever it is that’s going on!” Kevin stares him down until Matt gives up with an exaggerated shrug. “Fine. I’ll talk to Neil before Andrew gets back this afternoon. Sounds like he’s been on his own here the last few weeks.”

The two of them don’t say anything more as they return their trays and head on back to Fox Tower, but Kevin can’t quite quiet a small voice in his head that speaks in Matt’s disgusted tone. Sure, exy is more important, but shouldn’t he have got to understand what was going on with Neil better? What kind of a person just shuts their friend down when they reach out and want to talk? At the same time—whatever Neil has on his mind, he’d probably be better off putting it aside to focus on exy. Kevin was right, really. It’s not his fault if Neil couldn’t understand that simple message. He walks faster, frowns at passing students, and forcefully returns his thoughts to the day’s work.

* * *

Andrew and Aaron’s return that afternoon brings a bit more fanfare—at least from Nicky, who seems blithely determined to ignore Andrew’s impassivity, Neil’s sullenness and Kevin’s lack of interest. From the next room Kevin can hear Nicky chattering away about his summer, Matt’s loud interjections, even Aaron joining in occasionally. Two voices are conspicuously absent, but then neither Neil or Andrew have ever been much for small talk.

Over dinner, he lets his teammates’ conversation flow over him. He’s always had mixed feelings about these whole-team social situations, the everyday realities of living together on campus. He could be irritated by their constant focus on irrelevancies if he let himself, but it’s good to have other people to talk to about exy—and there’s something comforting in looking down the dining hall table and seeing _backliner_ , _striker_ , _backliner_ , _backliner_ , _goalkeeper_. When Matt leans behind Neil to say,

“Kevin! You never said how Thea is doing! Or is that all still a secret?” He laughs.

“We broke up. At the beginning of the summer.”

“Oh dude, I’m sorry.” Matt’s voice immediately drops into a concerned quiet. “What happened?”

“It’s not important,” Kevin replies, and immediately turns the conversation around to what they’ve been working on, their training regime, their plans for the season.

None of that is really what he’s been looking forward to, though, if he could admit he’s been looking forward to anything. A couple of hours later Neil is opening his and Andrew’s dorm-room door to Kevin’s impatient knock, Kevin is watching the two of them pick up their gear and then they’re heading down the stairs together to the parking lot. Kevin uses the drive over to fill Andrew in on how their plans have changed in the week he’s been away, not put off by Andrew’s minimal responses or how little Neil contributes. His mind is on the real homecoming—that moment the three of them will all be on the court again.

After warming up, they focus on a sequence that involves Neil passing half of the length of the court to Kevin, bouncing off the wall in a different spot each time at the last second to avoid an imaginary defence line, and Kevin shooting immediately on taking the pass. After twenty or more run-throughs of this scenario Kevin can feel a smile starting under the guard of his helmet. If he’d had any worry that Andrew wouldn’t be with them—wouldn’t be willing to give his proper attention to their practice—that worry is turning out to be completely misplaced. Kevin has managed to score on Andrew five times, but Andrew has deflected every other shot with that characteristic beautiful precision that had first drawn Kevin’s notice a little over two years earlier. He allows himself to think that perhaps they have everything they need for the coming season—or at least, the core of what they need, the core of a functioning team—right here.

After another ten minutes they switch places, with Kevin passing up the court to Neil and Neil shooting for the goal. Kevin sees Neil take the pass—not perfectly, Kevin notes, but well enough—shoot, and— Andrew doesn’t move. The ball ricochets off the wall a metre from him and the goal lights up. None of them makes any comment as Kevin grabs another ball, gets ready, and passes. Again, the goal lights up. The third time, Neil snaps.

“What, going to ignore me here as well? Or am I just shooting too fast for you?”

“I am not a dog at your beck and call.” Andrew’s retort is immediate and Kevin feels a sinking sensation as he hears Neil’s derisive snort. _You can’t goad Andrew into playing_ , he thinks urgently at Neil— _that’s just never how things have worked_. For whatever reason, though, the next shot Neil takes Andrew sends straight back towards Neil’s feet with such force that Neil has to jump backwards to avoid being tripped. The one after that seems to be aimed straight at Neil’s torso and before he can stop himself Kevin shouts up the court,

“Andrew what the hell are you playing at?” But there’s never been any point in scolding Andrew and he knows it. By the end of practice—shorter than what their habit had been earlier in the summer—Kevin is having to grit his teeth to keep his mouth shut, not knowing what he can say that wouldn’t make the situation worse. Andrew’s face is—if not impassive, certainly placid—but Kevin can see by the set of Neil’s shoulders that he is fuming.

Kevin takes longer in the shower than usual, trying to scald away the frustration in his body with hot water and steam. Whatever their drama is, he hopes they’ll learn from what a waste of time this evening was and keep it off the court in future. He doesn’t want to have to know about it. But the moment he turns the water off, he can hear raised voices from the locker rooms.

“—switch me off whenever you go away. I still exist when you’re out the room. Is it so fucking unreasonable of me to expect a text, something?” Neil’s voice is vehement, frustrated. “Or have I misunderstood something here?” Andrew’s tone in reply might have sounded unbothered to anyone who didn’t know him, but Kevin is too familiar with that dangerous calm to be fooled.

“I did not promise to be there hanging on your every word or to hold your hand when you are frightened of the dark.”

“But I couldn’t get my head straight and just hearing from you would’ve helped. I couldn’t stop—” Neil’s voice is halting again, and Kevin remembers their conversation in the car the other night. “I just couldn’t stop remembering— and I know that talking to you—”

“Did you think you would never relive the memory of your mother’s burnt body again, just because we had had a few good weeks together?” Kevin is abruptly overcome with awkwardness at hearing this, and bangs open the shower stall door to make sure they know that he’s coming. “There are things you have to learn to work on on your own that no-one else can help you with.” Neil glances across briefly as Kevin opens the door to the locker room. The two of them are standing squared off against each other like pugilists mid-brawl. Kevin can see Neil’s balled hands shaking even from across the room. Neil turns immediately back to Andrew and switches to respond in German, his tone cracking, pained. But Andrew replies again in English, refusing the request for privacy. “You know why I was away, what it cost me to give Betsy’s absurd idea a try. As if that place had ever been a home to me.” There’s a long pause, as if each is weighing up what the other has said, before Andrew continues “I have your back, just as I always have, but we must focus on our own demons. We are not the same person, Neil.”

“I know that. I’m not—” Neil sighs, deflates all at once from his anger, perhaps brought out of it by the presence of a third person. “I’m not asking for your attention every fucking second. Just— I just need to know where I stand.”

Kevin turns his back on the two of them and busies himself getting dressed, but he hears Andrew’s surprised huff at Neil’s sudden half-capitulation, and after a long pause, he hears Andrew add—

“I will think about this.”

Kevin is silent too on the drive back to Fox Tower. He feels somehow spent by everything he’s just heard, his mind oddly blank under the featureless night skyscape of clouds. Later, just as Kevin is drifting off to sleep, he’s brought back to wakefulness by his phone chiming. _i know you said it’s not your business_ , Neil’s text reads, _but you know him better than anyone else._ Kevin turns his phone on silent and rolls to face the wall. He feels as if cold water were surging over him.

* * *

Things seem gradually to settle over their first week back together as a team in Fox Tower. With Dan, Renee and Allison gone, the old divisions and alliances no longer make sense and Andrew, Nicky, Aaron and Kevin no longer feel so much like a family. Perhaps this is because they no longer have the upperclassmen to butt heads with and differentiate themselves from. Perhaps it’s because Andrew and Aaron’s relationship is shifting. At Betsy Dobson’s forceful suggestion they’d spent a week away together in California, revisiting the place where they were from and where the first great injustice of their lives had cursed Aaron and condemned Andrew. Kevin can’t imagine the two of them sightseeing together, much less having meaningful experiences processing their trauma together—but whatever happened on the trip, it does seem to have achieved something. Andrew is no longer ignoring Aaron completely but treats him with a distant cold, and his attitude to Katelyn seems to have warmed from icy contempt into complete lack of interest.

But the real thing that has changed, of course, is Neil and Andrew. Because by Tuesday Kevin sees them start to re-adopt their old habits—jogging together around the court as part of warm-up before practice, heading together to the roof to smoke (or not) in the evenings—and by the end of the week they seem from the outside much as they did before Andrew and Aaron’s trip. Kevin wonders how they made up, who has had to compromise or sacrifice his particular vision of their relationship for the sake of choosing its survival, or whether anyone has had to compromise at all. Perhaps they’ve just managed to communicate and found they could already be on the same page. It doesn’t matter to him, whatever drama they have going on is unimportant, and he shoves the thoughts of it aside.

The result of all these changes is a group of people quieter, less fractured than it was before but less tightly knit as well. In the spring Neil had seemed possessed by the drive to bring them all together as a team, and had succeeded in doing that where Kevin had long given up—but now Neil’s energies are not so laser-focused on team unity. Kevin somehow feels on the outside of something as he watches Andrew pass Neil a lit cigarette, Matt let out a snort of laughter at a dumb joke of Nicky’s, Neil touching Andrew’s arm briefly in greeting, Aaron crowing as he beats Nicky at some videogame, Andrew and Neil catching each other’s eyes across the locker room when Wymack gives them the schedule for their medical check-ups. He had thought that winning the championship would energise them all as much as it did him, that it would mean working with teammates as focused on the game as he was, but somehow, he thinks, it turned out he was wrong. They are just as focused on the other parts of their lives as ever, and somehow that is more alienating than before.

As soon as the new recruits arrive, Kevin finds himself plunged into everything exy—the training schedules that he, Neil and Wymack devised over the summer, the freshmen’s nervous energy and unexpected defects, the anxious beacon of the first game of the season approaching fast. It quickly becomes clear that although they made well-enough informed choices concerning their new players’ skills and backgrounds—one of the strikers in particular, Sheena, has all the talent needed to make an acceptable player in Kevin’s view, though she’s at least a year of training from really being able to leverage it—they didn’t know enough about their temperaments.

Off the court, the freshmen quickly form a group and socialise little with their older teammates, seeming to want to minimise any extra time together beyond their hours of practice. It’s as if, Kevin realises with a sinking disappointment, they resent the tough timetable and rigorous hours of work that Neil, Wymack and himself are asking them to put in. He can see familiar barriers going up, just like those that had existed between the upperclassmen and rest of them for the past three years. It doesn’t matter—he doesn’t give a fuck what these people think of him or how they spend their free time—it shouldn’t affect their game—but it does affect their game, their ability to play together, and he knows it.

Because on the court things are no better. The smoothly unified Foxes that he’d got to know the previous semester, thinking tactically together as if a single body, are gone. The freshmen lack so many basic skills he hadn’t expected to need to teach. They don’t understand his or Neil’s midgame shouted instructions and interjections, they need everything explained to them twice. Sheena—and only Sheena, as the only really promising recruit—he starts bringing to his evening practices with Andrew and Neil, though only for two nights per week. Although she seems excited at first, she quickly shifts to looking grim and stressed throughout every session, is silent on the drives back to Fox Tower, and never seems to adopt any of his suggestions or adapt to any criticisms as willingly as he expects. He worries that—like Nicky would, like the more obviously useless other freshmen would—she begrudges the extra time on the court instead of seeing it for the privilege it is.

Two days before the first game of the season against Breckenridge, at the end of one particularly awful practice, Kevin cracks at the sound of Wymack’s whistle. He turns to Jack, a new striker who has somehow missed every shot on goal he’s taken in the whole session in spite of the fact that Andrew was leaving it largely undefended, and says,

“What the fuck was that? How do you expect to be worthy of a spot in this team with pathetic performances like that? How can you hope to call yourself a class one exy player?” He’s half aware his voice is louder than he intended, but he turns to the rest of the team and keeps going anyway. “I mean— any of you? We have our first game of the season in two days and I’d be amazed if you all can get through it without tripping over your own fucking shoelaces. Does none of you give a damn about what we’re trying to do here?” He realises belatedly that at some point while speaking he must have thrown his racket against the plexiglass wall, hearing the crash without ever becoming aware of the decision to throw it.

“Kevin,” he sees Neil stepping forward from behind the stricken-looking backliners, “stop. Just—” But Kevin doesn’t want to hear it, and he strides off the court and to the locker rooms, skipping whatever false pep-talk and platitudes Wymack or Neil might want to give to the team about their practice. The others’ chatter in the car on the drive back is cautious, avoiding asking him anything directly or talking about their prospects in the coming game, and somehow that annoys Kevin even more.

* * *

They win their first match of the semester, but barely. Sitting at their standard table in Eden’s Twilight that night, Kevin finds himself tuned out of the others’ conversation, his mind still on the game. It shouldn’t have been that close—what could they have done differently? How could he have got them working better in sync with each other?

Matt has come out with them tonight and the newness of this social dynamic, Matt joining Andrew’s lot, registers dimly for Kevin—but he quickly moves on from it as unimportant. There comes a moment when it’s just the two of them at the table since Nicky and Aaron are on the dancefloor and Neil and Andrew at the bar. Matt already seems a bit tipsy and Kevin has no intention of making small talk, but Matt turns to him abruptly and raises his voice over the music,

“So what was that the other day?” He’s frowning in a way Kevin can’t quite read, “What’s going on with you at the moment?”

“What do you mean?” Kevin shoots back, affronted. “Nothing’s going on with me—the problem is with the team.” Matt’s frown deepens.

“I don’t see it.”

“They can’t work together,” Kevin says, probably more vehemently than he needs to in the close space, even given the music, “they can’t communicate on the court and they don’t want to put the work in off the court. They’re never going to get anywhere if they can’t fix these basic attitude problems first.”

“You mean, _we_ can’t work together,” Matt interjects with a lopsided smile, “ _we’re_ never going to get anywhere.”

“What?”

“You’re one of us, man, had you forgot?” Kevin opens his mouth but Matt bulldozes on. “But no really I don’t see it. Yeah the freshmen have a way to go, but they’re new. They’re working hard and they’ll get there. I don’t think I was any better when I first arrived, and Sheena’s definitely better than Neil was last August. Yeah we don’t all socialise much off the court yet, but maybe that’ll come too. And it’d be a hell of a lot easier if you could chill the fuck out a little and stop yelling at them that they’re trash every other minute.”

“You can’t seriously be trying to blame tonight’s performance on me?” Kevin shoots back, “If it weren’t for me holding things together in the second half—”

“Look that’s just my point.” Matt interrupts him, “I wasn’t talking about tonight’s performance. Sure there’s things to improve, but we won, didn’t we?” Kevin scoffs. “I’m talking about _your_ attitude problem.”

“My attitude _—_ ” Kevin starts heatedly, but Matt is louder and more persistent.

“Honestly I thought you, Neil and Andrew were gonna be like, the heart of this team. You guys are way ahead of the rest of us in terms of skill, I acknowledge, and you seemed to be really on the same page by the end of last season. I know it sounds fucking crazy what with Andrew being Andrew, but I thought the way you guys worked together so well would be a model for the freshmen. But you don’t even seem to be willing to _talk_ to Neil and Andrew the last few weeks.”

“But they’re part of the problem too. If Neil can’t be fully dedicated to his game, how can he be a reasonable captain and bring the team together?”

“Again, like— I— that’s just not how it looks to me.” Matt replies with a half-laugh. “Neil is doing a fine job as captain, and he’s as single-minded as ever about exy. You’re really the only one who has an issue here.” Kevin starts to object but Matt shouts over him. “Nah man, I’ve said my piece. We’re not going to get anywhere arguing about this,” before he gets up and heads to the dance floor. Kevin sits fuming for a second, staring at the empty glass in his hand. Where the hell are Neil and Andrew with the next round? Or have they gone off to do— something else together instead? He stands, pushes his way through the crowd towards the other bar, his eyes on the rows of bottles hanging and the lights catching off them.

* * *

The next morning—well, afternoon—Kevin half-sleeps in the car on the way back to campus, drifting in and out of awareness of his surroundings, the others’ half-hearted conversation, his hangover, the other traffic on the freeway. He feels vaguely ashamed of himself, but he’s not sure about what. Snatches of his conversation with Matt the night before keep replaying in his head, but he tries to drown them out with the noise of the car, with his low-grade nausea, with thoughts of what they should take forward from how yesterday’s game went, how they should adapt their planned practices the coming week.

That night—headache finally dissipated—he borrows Sheena’s car and drives to the Foxhole Court alone. Neil and Andrew won’t care anyway about missing one evening practice, not when they’ve all been out drinking the night before. The streetlights are off in the parking lot and the building is as empty as he would expect this late on a Saturday. Kevin feels a little like he’s in a horror film—even though he turns on the lights wherever he goes, he can always see glimpses of other darkened rooms, darkened corridors through the glass windows in the doors. He keeps thinking he sees someone else moving out of the corner of one eye, but it’s always his own face reflecting from the glass.

The echoing empty court is at once welcoming and lonely, familiar and pregnant with meaning as he sets up rows of target cones. Somehow it’s no longer the homely place it has become when the three of them are there together. It reminds him forcefully of those many solitary night practices before Neil had arrived, running through Raven drills alone on the court, gradually trying to get his right hand to work like he remembered his left working—although then Andrew had driven the two of them and been sitting silent in the stands, even if he’d refused to take part properly. But so much has happened since those nights.

Kevin’s mind seems to be working in overdrive and he can’t stop thoughts restating, memories repeating, even as he starts to practice. His muscles sing with the effort but somehow offer no distraction. Why is no-one taking on board what he’s been trying to tell them about strategy, about the challenges ahead of them? He hefts a ball to glance off the wall and knocks his target cone flying on the rebound. What has happened to their team unity? He hits another cone with a satisfying smack. Where the fuck are Neil and Andrew? His heavy racket feels weightless, like a part of his arm. Why is he suddenly on the outside when he’d been the one to find Neil and bring him onboard in the first place? His muscles tense against that perfect moment when the ball leaves the racket. Why had those two abandoned what the three of them had been building—had been on the cusp of building—in order to be— He realises his aim is a little off, adjusts. In order to be just a two? His ball hits the target.

He stops, panting, no target cones left standing, and all at once the understanding comes to him as if he’s been working up to it for weeks. He had offered both Neil and Andrew something he would never give to any of their teammates, the most important thing he had to offer—his game, his time, his respect and unforgiving attention as players—and they had chosen each other over him. Chosen each other over the game. It’s as simple as that. He’s jealous. It’s pathetic, he thinks with a grimace, but it’s what he has been feeling, the place the barrier between him and the rest of the team has grown. And it isn’t just about the game, his jealousy is somewhere more tender than that. It’s—

“So here he is, the lonely exy queen.” Andrew’s amused drawl cuts suddenly across the quiet court and Kevin spins to see him, to see both of them, Andrew and Neil, entering, already wearing gear. “What, did you just forget us tonight? We assumed you were too hungover to practice.”

“I—” Kevin is taken aback, feels as if he’s been caught in some shameful act, although all he’s been doing really is thinking and there’s no way they can read his thoughts on his face. “I just thought you wouldn’t care about missing one night.”

“Why would we not care about missing a night of practice?” Neil is frowning, “I want to try and recreate that insane shot the Breckenridge striker took on Andrew’s goal from the halfcourt line. You pointed it out too, remember? We talked about this after the game. There’s stuff to go over.” Andrew doesn’t add anything but just watches Kevin with narrowed eyes. Kevin shrugs and turns to pick up the scattered cones, face burning under the guard of his helmet for some reason he can’t quite articulate to himself.

* * *

In the following week, Kevin feels like two people. He can feel his familiar frustration rising up in practices as Neil lets the new recruits slip up, fall short, and doesn’t call them on it. He feels his cold disillusionment when Sheena misses the target in a drill for the twentieth time that evening, turns, and says,

“Christ, I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

He can feel the bitter sting when one evening, with half the team hanging out in Nicky’s room, Matt is the only one to pick up his conversation about tactics for their upcoming game, Neil’s eyes turning to Kevin, following his words, then turning away.

But at the same time, there’s now another thread quietly interjecting, trying out Matt’s words at Eden’s Twilight in his own voice. As he shouts pointers to the new backliner when she misses a pass in practice he can’t help but notice Aaron’s shoulders coming up, Nicky’s wince. When Andrew makes a spectacular, diving save one night, deflecting Kevin’s near-perfect shot, the new voice points out that Andrew and Neil are still there with him, and that Andrew is actually trying now, so far have they come since this time a year ago. As he half-listens to Neil giving the team pointers at the end of a session the thought occurs to him that Neil _is_ doing his job as captain, is pulling the new recruits up on things, even if he gives them a longer leash to fail on their own than Kevin would. As he watches Neil close the door behind himself, choosing to head up to smoke with Andrew on the roof rather than watch another taped game with Kevin, he can’t help but think—well— after how he responded to Neil asking for his help a month ago, how can he expect any more?

Practices pass and somehow it’s Friday again, there’s only a week until their second game of the season, and Kevin has never felt more disconnected from his game. He goes through their afternoon practice in a haze, speaking little, losing track of the details of what is happening elsewhere on the court. It’s like watching a movie too late at night, attention battling with sleep, watching himself miss important details as if he were someone else, except that it isn’t sleep that’s encroaching on him but his own thoughts. Worries keep distracting him—worries about whether he’s been approaching all of this right, about whether it’s his own fault that everything feels so disjointed, about his inability to communicate. It comes as a shock to realise that that’s what’s happening—he’s never felt distracted from the game _at all_ before, he thinks, never really understood the idea of unrelated thoughts intruding and it not being possible to ward them off completely. The memory of Neil’s words in the car come back to him— _it’s never not worked before_. He scowls, focuses, shouts a hurried instruction to the backliners.

That evening Andrew’s gang go out drinking but Kevin turns them down. Two impulses seem to be warring in him and he follows both, finding himself in the locker room at the Foxhole Court with a 12oz bottle of vodka in his kit bag. He changes, stretches, heads out to start his warm up, but doesn’t enter the court itself, instead running endless laps around the outside of the plexiglass. There’s any number of things he should be working on on his own, things that don’t need anyone else there to practice with, he knows. Whatever the others might say he knows privately that he’s still far off his remembered peak in accuracy and strength with either hand, his injured left stiffer and weaker than it should be, his right still less than perfectly adept. In a way, solo practice time is a precious resource: no need to manage Andrew’s unpredictability or Neil’s moods, no need to consider the training needs of the others around him, just time to concentrate on what he needs alone.

And yet the door of the empty court is forbidding, heavy. He feels his teeth clench as he approaches it on his circuit, feels a weird relief as he passes it, continues to run. He doesn’t understand this—himself—why he’s not doing the obvious next thing, taking the step in front of him. Eventually, having long lost count of his circuits, he gives up and goes back to the changing rooms. Once he’s washed and changed he sits next to his packed-away gear and stares at the wall. He feels nothing at all. He feels incredibly frustrated, uncomprehending irritation at wasting another evening. He doesn’t know why he’s been acting this way. He feels furious at himself, at Andrew and Neil, at Neil, for making him feel like this.

The vodka begins to mellow his thoughts, leaves his feelings more powerful but blunter and less acute, and they wash over him unresisted. He just needs to apologise to Neil, he thinks suddenly, for how he acted over the summer. Whatever else is going on, whatever else he feels, that’s a moment that he knows went wrong, something he can fix. It will be good for their game, for helping them work together more closely. Maybe it will shift things a little back towards where they were. He stands abruptly and puts a hand against the wall, his head spinning with the shock of movement. Perhaps he isn’t safe to drive after all. And anyway, he remembers, Neil won’t be at Fox Tower, he’ll be off in Columbia, with Aaron and Nicky. With Andrew.

Kevin pauses a moment, his thoughts moving slowly, then grabs his phone and sits back down. _i’m sorry refusng to talk t u about andrwe over the summer_ , he writes, sends the text without checking it, and leans back on the wooden bench. Perhaps things will start feeling differently in the morning. They still have six days of practices until their second match. There’s time to make things work.

* * *

Sheena either doesn’t notice or is sufficiently intimidated by Kevin not to comment when he returns her car to the parking lot at Fox Tower past 11am the next morning, still too groggy to drive safely but at least probably no longer over the legal limit. The dorms are quiet. His phone is out of battery and the others must still be in Columbia, so he collapses into his own bed and goes back to sleep. When, sometime in the mid-afternoon, he plugs his phone in and turns it on, it pings with a notification. He stares confusedly at Neil’s text— _thanks. okay_.—for a minute before remembering the message he’d sent the night before and feeling his skin crawl. What the hell had he done that for? It’s amazing Neil even figured out what conversation he’d been referring to with no context—if he has figured it out, that is, and they’re not talking at cross purposes. Why can’t Kevin communicate clearly when he does choose to talk to people, he wonders irritably. Although—his thoughts pull back from thinking about what fuller or clearer message he might have wanted to give. And what does the laconic reply mean? What’s _okay_ now that wasn’t before?

He drifts through the rest of the afternoon watching a replay of one of the games from the day before, reading the analyses posted on the exy sites overnight. Noises filtering in from the hall outside tell him the others are back, though they sound pretty subdued. Kevin wonders about their practice session that evening, whether Andrew and Neil will be up for it. Presumably they will, he thinks—when have they last been on campus and missed one? He has reading for his Middle East History course due Monday, and he picks up _The Ottoman Scramble for Africa_ for a while only to find himself reading the same sentences over and over. _A person from Jalu walked by himself to Kufra; which was also our destination. This journey is a distance of at least 150 hours on foot. 150 hours walking in an ocean of sand by himself! We could not even fathom such a march of fools._ He puts the book back down again.

He eats early and alone in the athletes’ dining hall, realising how hungry he is only once he’s sat down and tasting the food. Afterwards he finds himself half-impatient and half-dreading the prospect of training with Neil and Andrew. He longs to be back on the court with them—but what he wants really, he realises, is to be back on the court with them months ago, when in spite of all the violence and drama the three of them felt like they were working together towards a shared goal. When stepping into the court felt like coming home. Instead of entering the court with them now, when it all means so much more and so much less than it did before. Kevin wants the simplicity of unity, of working himself tired and there being nothing in his head but exy—he doesn’t want the uncertainty and self-doubt that he’s been descending slowly into for the past five weeks. And that uncertainty is worst around Neil and Andrew. Even this anticipation of spending time with them is unbearable, it’s a distraction. It’s energy he should be spending on what matters.

He feels himself coming to a decision without any conscious weighing of options, without having realised that what he’s about to do was even a possibility until it’s already chosen. He’s apologised for being a dick to Neil in the summer—that’s all that can reasonably be asked of him there, and he knows he can’t ask for anything more from the two of them. They’ve made their decision. Now he just has to work out how to move on from his feelings and concentrate more fully on his game, on the team. He gets out his phone and types quickly, not leaving space for further thought: _going to train one on one with Sheena tonight, she needs the practice._ He selects both Neil and Andrew’s numbers, sends, and stands for a moment, feeling weirdly out of breath. Then he leaves his room and heads down the hall towards the door of the room Sheena shares with Joss, the new backliner. She looks surprised and tired when she opens the door to him but, he thinks, pleased. Probably pleased.

This is for the best, he thinks, sitting shotgun in Sheena’s embarrassingly beat-up old car. Andrew and Neil can train together whenever they want, they don’t need his presence for that. They’re probably relieved, he thinks, as he glances at Neil’s response to his text— _oh. are you sure? but i thought we were going to work on long-distance precision again._ —and puts his phone back in his pocket. This way he can concentrate on the work he needs to do to make the team function, he thinks as he critiques Sheena’s technique, without being distracted by irrelevant stresses about Neil and Andrew. It really doesn’t matter what he wants, he thinks as he packs up his gear to go back to the Tower, reading another text from Neil— _okay fine then, i get it._ —and one from Andrew— _Whatever you are trying to do, Day, I do not appreciate it._ This is about making a new start.

Finally, as he puts away his laptop in the early hours of the morning and gets ready to sleep, he gets another text from Neil. _we can work on those drills tomorrow though, right._ This one Kevin answers. _No. I have other stuff I need to work on._ That, at least, is clear, he thinks. There’s no risk of Neil misunderstanding this.

* * *

The five days before their second game of the season, against the USCB Sand Sharks, feels odd and unstructured without Kevin’s normal evening training sessions with Neil and Andrew. Two more evenings he trains one-on-one with Sheena. There are moments when he thinks he’s starting to see real improvement, though not as much and not as fast as is needed—and more often he feels frustrated by how far she has to go. The mornings are a haze. Kevin had perfected a knife-edge balance between sleep, practice and schoolwork over his time at Palmetto State, working out just how much rest he needed to be able to concentrate through classes the next morning—but whatever has been going on with him for the last few weeks seems to have tipped this delicate system out of alignment, and he can barely pay attention for five minutes at a stretch. Twice he finds himself at the end of a lecture with barely any notes to show for it.

Afternoon practice sessions with the team do not go well. Neither of the new goalkeepers can make up for the loss of Renee, and Andrew seems to be rapidly losing interest in working with them. Kevin is pleased to see that Sheena’s accuracy has improved, but the other new strikers are less than useless, and none of them seems able to work with the backliners at all. The defensive line is worst of all, somehow, even though it’s the part of the team least changed by the departure of the upperclassmen. Nicky makes snarky comments, Aaron snaps and spits criticism at the strikers, Matt starts each session trying to keep the peace before getting progressively more irritated, and Joss seems to miss every pass sent her way. Kevin dishes out enough criticism of his own of his teammates’ performances, but somehow none of it seems to make an impact. Even Neil’s game seems off, his accuracy and attention worse than they’ve been in months, but Kevin steadfastly bites his tongue and doesn’t point that out to him.

At the end of sessions he listens to Wymack and Neil delivering analyses, corrections, pep-talk—they never seem to see the whole picture, he thinks, to quite realise the degree to which the team isn’t moving as one. But here, too, he keeps his mouth shut. The best he can do for the team is work on his own abilities, critique the skills of the teammates he is working with. But fundamentally they’re in the same position they were in a year ago. If they want to be unified then they—and now maybe most of all Neil, both as captain and as the person who brought them together the preceding season—have to make that choice themselves.

Off the court, Kevin barely exchanges a word with any of them. He feels Neil’s furious cold shoulder, the extra ice in Andrew’s occasional, impassive stare, but he ignores them. He doesn’t have time, he tells himself, for these irrelevancies.

Friday comes at last. It’s a four-hour drive to the coast, and the team bus is unusually quiet as they finally turn into Beaufort. Wymack is grim-faced in the unfamiliar locker room before the game starts.

“I know that this week’s practices have not been perfect,” he says after shouting to get all of their attention, “but I also know you’ve each got it in you to play well tonight. Don’t give me any less than one hundred percent, and don’t you dare start fighting with each other out there. Keep your heads screwed on and work as a team, and I know we can give these bastards a truly horrible night.” Kevin can’t tell if the others are feeling the energy Wymack is trying to communicate, but knows that he isn’t. Perhaps it will be enough to bring them together.

It isn’t enough. By the end of the first half they’re at a dismal 1-0 and Kevin feels his whole body burning with a quiet, despairing fury. The opposing team lack any finesse—there isn’t a single decent player among them, and by his estimation the Foxes should be leading by several points. Following Wymack’s plan, he has sat out the entire first half, with Neil and Jack forming the offensive line to be swapped out for Kevin and Sheena in the second half. Andew has had the goal for the first half and done his usual magic act, deflecting every one of the nine attempts the Sand Sharks made on goal. But that isn’t good enough, when Neil and Jack couldn’t make it past their defensive line to build up a safe margin. Sitting at the sides and seeing the whole picture of their dysfunction—quite how out of sync each part of the team is with every other—is unbearable, but there’s nothing Kevin can do at this point but play his own part.

In the second half he pushes forward with all he’s got and scores five points—but every time he sees the opposing team’s defence closing in on him he has nowhere to pass to, and every time they take the ball the Foxes’ backliners are somehow nowhere near. In those forty-five minutes the Sand Sharks’ strikers manage to outrun the Foxes’ backliners over and over, making nine shots on their goal. The new goalkeeper, Rudra, saves two of them—but it’s not enough, and in the last four minutes the Sand Sharks score the final point they need to avoid penalty shots at the end and take the game 7-6.

In the tunnel back to the locker rooms, Kevin suddenly finds himself smacked against the wall, a hand gripping his shoulder like a vice.

“What the hell was that?” Neil’s voice is shaking with anger. “Haven’t you heard a single thing I’ve said in the last week about our strategy? Or is the great Kevin Day too good to follow through on anyone else’s plan, or ever fucking pass the ball?”

“This disaster is not on me,” Kevin snaps back, pushing Neil’s hand away. “I did everything I could to save this dire situation but your team was never there to pull their weight. There’s only so much one player can do.”

“ _My_ team?” Neil echoes, “ _Our_ team were trying to follow through with what we’d planned. Only you were always trying some kind of one-man heroic assault on their defence, totally ignoring where anyone else was or how we said we’d play this.” Kevin scoffs at him, tries to push on past, but Neil continues. “What’s happened with you? Why the hell have you suddenly given up on this, on all of us?”

“Me?” Kevin feels stunned with anger for a moment but finds his words quickly enough. “I was taking your fucking lead here, Neil. Don’t forget that I created this—” he glances at Andrew, standing still and steely behind Neil—“and you were the ones to give up on it. Everything since is just,” he searches for a phrase for half a second “—following through.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Comes Neil’s response at once, although he sounds more confused now than angry. Kevin scowls at him and pushes past without another word, down the tunnel and to the showers.

* * *

The bus ride back to Palmetto State is even quieter than the way out, each player nursing their own hurts and resentments about how the game had gone. Kevin sits close to the front, headphones on, and watches traffic. Occasionally he turns and glances at where Neil and Andrew sit towards the back of the bus, leant into the aisle from either side and talking in low voices. For once there’s no plan for Andrew, Nicky, Aaron, Neil and Kevin to go to Eden’s Twilight when they all get back—none of them even suggests going out drinking, and Kevin hears Matt invite himself along with the freshmen as they head out to commiserate the loss. Alone in his dorm, Kevin sits at his desk with his laptop and tries to write down what went wrong tonight—how their strategy needs to change—but he can’t seem to figure any of it out. The game is a blur. He can’t remember what the plan had been going in, or really any of the detail of how it had so completely fallen apart.

After an hour, someone tries the dorm-room door without knocking and, finding it locked, shouts through at him.

“Kevin.” Andrew’s voice is imperious and mocking. “Stop sulking and open this door. We need to talk.” Kevin gets up slowly, walks across, unlocks the door.

“What could we possibly have to say to each other, after tonight?” Even he can hear the dullness in his own voice. Andrew smiles dangerously.

“Well, for myself I would agree with you. What is the benefit in talking to someone who is acting like a spoiled child? But,” he puts on a long-suffering voice, “you and Neil need to talk, and I have lost patience waiting for both of you to realise that.” He steps to one side, indicating for Kevin to walk ahead. “So come.”

For a moment Kevin thinks about refusing, but he doesn’t have the energy. Better to just get this over with—whatever this is—let Neil get his anger out and have it be done. The two of them walk up to the roof where Kevin sees Neil’s familiar silhouette sitting on the edge, smells cigarette smoke and sees the tiny lit ember in Neil’s hand.

“Talk.” Andrew says from behind him, “I am bored of all of this,” before he closes the door and leaves the two of them alone. Kevin finds himself unsure what to do, waits an awkward thirty seconds before stepping forward and sitting in Andrew’s usual spot at Neil’s side. The parking lot below them is nearly featureless in the dark. In the near distance they hear a group of students laughing as they walk past, on the way to or from some campus party.

“I don’t care what your problem is, we need to restart practices with the three of us,” comes Neil’s voice beside him. “I hate that I rely on it but—” he sounds as if he’s speaking through gritted teeth. “We can all benefit from your skill. I can benefit from it, as a player and as captain. And to work together we need to keep training together, however much you hate it.” He continues on, not giving Kevin a moment to reply. “We can make up for our loss tonight—we can still make it out of our group if we win out from here. But we need— I need us to work together again, like we were before. It’s the only way I know this works.”

“Sure.” The word leaves Kevin’s lips the moment Neil leaves a gap, before he’s even thought about it. He feels as though there’s no fight left in him anyway, like he doesn’t know what he’d be fighting for even if he could.

“Oh.” Neil twists his body towards him, trying to look him full in the face. “That easy?”

“I said sure.”

The silence stretches out. A car pulls into the parking lot and lets out four inebriated football players, their conversation echoing on the walls of the tower until the doors close behind them. Kevin has begun to wonder if either of them has anything else to say after all when Neil asks, quietly,

“What did you mean, earlier?”

“What?”

“You said that we—that me and Andrew—were the ones who gave up on things first. What did you mean?” Kevin is silent. “You mean, the ones to give up on the team? On exy?”

“Yes,” Kevin replies at once before realising that this isn’t what he’d meant, not really, or only half what he’d meant. “I mean, sort of. All our practice sessions last year, those nights. You learning Raven drills, me training my left hand again. Andrew finally, finally coming round. You—” his voice catches but he tries to continue, “I meant that you were the ones who gave up on that. On us.” Another long silence. The late august air is thick with heat and it’s as if his words have to struggle through it to reach Neil, he doesn’t know how to say things like these, he’s never known.

“Us.” Neil repeats eventually, “you mean the three of us. Training together. Working towards making Court.”

“Yes,” Kevin’s voice is strange and distant in his ears, “partly. I mean yes—that.”

“I don’t get it.” Kevin stares down into the darkness but can almost see Neil’s furrowed brow in his tone. “How did me and Andrew give up on that? It’s you who cancelled our practice sessions.”

“I’m not talking about a week ago,” Kevin hears himself reply, “I’m talking about much earlier. Last semester, the summer.”

“What did we do then?”

“You—” he can’t believe he’s saying this, “you chose each other. Your—” he doesn’t know the words for these things, “your— thing, your relationship. You chose that over what we all shared, what we were working towards. Over me.”

“I—” Neil’s voice is halting, careful. “I didn’t— I never gave up on this team, or making Court. Why the hell would you think I’d given up on exy?” Kevin doesn’t reply, so Neil continues. “Is this— Are you saying that me and Andrew being a couple is the problem for you?”

“Yes.” Kevin’s voice is almost a whisper now, but he feels like he’s repeating something he’s been saying over and over for weeks. “We were a three, but you two chose each other.” He hurries on from the humiliating words, trying to speak louder, “And I get it. You’re allowed to make your own romantic choices, to—” He stops and tries to restart the sentence, “You feel differently about each other than you do about me. I don’t know how to stop it interfering with our game. But I understand that you don’t want m— want what we had.”

“But I don’t think you do understand.” Neil’s voice is firmer now, speaking slowly, as if plotting some careful trajectory. “I’ve been obsessed with you since I was a kid. I don’t know anyone else who gets how important exy is like you do, and no-one else has made such a difference to how I play. Did you think we were being forced to spend every night training with you? Why—” he takes a breath, “why would Andrew and me getting together change anything in how we feel about you?”

“But.” Kevin feels stubbornly as if he’s the only one willing to speak obvious reality. “It does. Change things. You being a couple, I mean. You can only,” he clears his throat, “be that close with. With one person.”

“I don’t see why.” In the quiet that follows, Kevin glances down at the edge between them. Neil’s hand is lying there, fingers curled round the lip of the roof.

“But there’s Andrew,” he says at last, “he’s only ever really looked at one person as anything other than an inconvenience, and that’s you. How can we be—” he searches for a better word, fails to find one, “closer. If he’s not on the same page?”

“If you actually believe that, then you don’t know Andrew. Have you forgotten that you were the one to give him exy, to try to convince him it was something worthwhile to build a life around? Or that he protected you every step you walked for two years? Why would all of that have changed?” Kevin puts his hand down between them, fingers almost touching Neil’s.

“You keep telling me how I’m wrong, what I’m forgetting,” he says after another pause. “Tell me—” he loses his nerve, stops, then plunges on: “tell me what you feel. Do you want me, Neil?” Neil’s quiet huff of surprise at his directness matches his own feelings. Neil turns, and the tips of their fingers touch as his grip on the roof shifts.

“Yes.” He replies simply, not quite smiling.

“Oh.” The two of them look at each other for a long minute before turning back to the night air. “What does that mean we do, then?” Neil laughs.

“I don’t know. But I know I feel at home, whenever I’m with you and Andrew.” The tips of their fingers knit together, tentative and soft. “And I know I want to hold on to that feeling. What do you think we do next?”

“I don’t know. But,” and Kevin can feel a smile starting on his own lips, “I think that I want to find out.”

The quiet and the night lengthens between them, a different kind of silence than before. Kevin is as light as air, as if he could be lifted up and off the roof by the heat rising off the tarmac far below, as if he isn’t quite real and none of this has happened. He is empty of thoughts, is thinking nothing at all, he thinks, catches himself, almost laughs. Neil’s index finger begins to move gently against his own, stroking the skin in almost imperceptible gestures.

“Practice tomorrow night?” Neil asks.

“Sure,” Kevin replies, “yes. Of course.”

* * *

Breaking their normal habit, it isn’t Kevin who collects the other two for practice that Saturday night. He’s slept away half the day again, then spent a panicked afternoon trying to catch up with school work that feels like it’s getting quickly out of control. His mind keeps drifting back to the night before, an unwanted smile playing over his face as he sits alone at his desk, his eyes skipping over paragraphs. Somehow, for once, this distraction doesn’t make him feel panicked. He checks his phone a couple of times but there are no messages, and the Foxes’ corridor is unusually quiet.

After dinner he paces, trying to fix his mind to the task of what they should practice tonight, how they’re going to come back from their ignominious loss, what the team needs to get them working together—but his thoughts won’t be fixed. He picks up his phone and puts it down, checking his texts, checking the time. It’s too early to go and pick up Neil and Andrew still, they don’t usually leave for another hour.

But then, without ceremony—without knocking—someone opens the door, and Kevin turns to see Andrew standing half in his room, half in the hallway outside. He looks around with something like amusement playing over his face.

“Grab your sticks, Exy Queen. It is time we head out.” Kevin slings his sports bag over his shoulder, follows Andrew down to the parking lot. The sun is setting pink and low in the sky, setting white cars and silver cars around them aflame, turning blue cars to black. Neil is leaning against Andrew’s car, and on seeing them coming opens a rear door and swings himself into the back seat where Kevin normally sits. Kevin pauses, hovers on the other side of the car, unsure what to do, as Andrew slides into the driver’s seat and slams the door. Andrew leans across, kicks open the passenger side door with one foot, says

“In the front, Day.”

Kevin gets in, registering Andrew’s knowing almost-smirk. In the rear-view mirror, he can see Neil grinning behind him. Andrew is slamming the car into gear even as Kevin pulls the door shut behind him, and the three of them set off towards the Foxhole Court.

It feels to Kevin something like going home.


End file.
